Thabo Mbeki

Thabo Mbeki (18 June 1942-) was President of South Africa from 16 June 1999 to 24 September 2008, succeeding Nelson Mandela and preceding Kgalema Motlanthe. He was a member of the African National Congress party.

Biography
Thabo Mbeki was born in Mbewuleni, Cape Province, South Africa on 18 June 1942, the son of a former African National Congress president. He joined the ANC Youth League in 1956, and he also became a member of the South African Communist Party. He rose in the SACP's ranks, and he went to Britain to study economics at the University of Sussex from 1963 to 1966, and then worked for the ANC offices in London from 1967 to 1970. He left to receive military training in the Soviet Union before going to work at the ANC headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia. Becoming a close adviser to ANC President Oliver Tambo, he was ANC spokesperson on foreign affairs, while simultaneously developing contacts with leading figures in white South African society and its business world. In 1993, he became ANC chairman, and the pragmatic moderate was chosen for the pivotal post of first Vice-President to Nelson Mandela, responsible for the day-to-day running of the government, and was thus groomed as Mandela's successor.

In 1999, Mbeki succeeded Mandela as President of South Africa, and he oversaw the growth of the economy at a rate of 4.5% a year, as well as the expansion of the black middle-class, and the mediation of conflicts in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Cote d'Ivoire. He was controversial for supporting Robert Mugabe's dictatorship in Zimbabwe, for accusing his critics of racism, and for causing the deaths of up to 365,000 people by banning antiretroviral drugs from hospitals. He left office in 2008.